


Worse Things Happen At Sea

by Jean_grantaire



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, mild swearing, the pirate au based on That Dream i had, this is very silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 20:24:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11882142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jean_grantaire/pseuds/Jean_grantaire
Summary: Grantaire is the world's worst pirate captain. No, seriously.





	Worse Things Happen At Sea

“Sails!” Grantaire groaned his disapproval at his least favourite wake-up call. Really, it was a hideous hour for some inconsiderate ship to wander into the same vast expanse of water as them – the sun had only emerged above the horizon a couple of hours earlier, the day still fresh and cool and too far ahead of midday for any self-respecting man to appreciate it.

“Captain?” No, he reconsidered as he rolled out of bed and straightened out the worst of the creases in yesterday’s clothes from where he’d slept in them, _that_ was his least favourite wake-up call. Grantaire glared at the door, at the insistent fist pounding on it from the other side, in a way that might have passed as fierce or dangerous if he hadn’t been half-awake and hungover, and took his time in crossing the cabin to swing it open and end the ceaseless banging noise. Idly, he hoped that the raised fist suspended in mid-air on the other side of it had been aimed at the wood and not at his face.

“Sails, captain.” The man attached to the hand repeated, quite unnecessarily.

“What of them?” Grantaire retorted. “What are sails to sailors? Do you tremble at prophecy; does your neighbour carry a bag of winds stowed beneath his shirt? We are all of us nobodies, there is no reason to flatter yourself.” Then, naturally, he went over to take the offered spyglass and look at the ship on the horizon himself anyway.

“She looks to be a French merchant ship.” The quartermaster sounded not unreasonably confused – there were no French ports even remotely near to the stretch of shoreline they’d departed from the previous day. Either she’d been through an unfathomably cruel storm, or her captain was even worse at plotting courses than Grantaire. Still, the idea of managing to get a ship so thoroughly lost was somewhat absurd. “Perhaps, Captain, we ought to check our charts?” The suggestion was, thankfully, more than a little uncertain – Grantaire recalled with startling clarity an incident a couple of days ago:

_“Charts?” Grantaire scoffed. The powder he’d liberated from the men was truly fantastic stuff. Everything felt slightly blurry in his mind; picking up anything from any of his senses was an experience not dissimilar to reading from a wet page, freshly-written, all of the words bleeding together. A strangely delightful aesthetic, but a nuisance to interpret. “Mortals, my father detested my mathematical skill, and I have learned from the best. Numbers are an ungrateful mistress! The more effort you devote to them, the worse they get. Here, it is best to apply experience and reverse the trick on them. Rule with the authority of a tyrant! I am Henry VIII: I will demand the respect of any woman that dares share my quarters!” With that, the window had been flung open and the charts tossed out of it, moonlight shining through the paper as waves caught at its edges and lapped away at the ink._

There was, Grantaire decided, absolutely no reason for the fate of the charts to come into the conversation now. “You fetch your charts, and I will fetch my sonnets: when they have boarded us, we can read to them their coordinates with a poem. Education is useless, literature at best a hobby, the philosopher no better than his barrel when a pistol is taken to his head. Are we gentlemen or savages? Ask any empire! The wind does not care for our charts, and neither will the French with their eyes gouged out. We will spend tonight fat on Bourbon riches, or you can put those charts to use and feast on them.”

Permission taken (and the majority of Grantaire’s words ignored as they usually were), a course was set to catch the ship on a favourable wind, a note of good fortune, and an estimate was set of a few hours at most before they caught up with her.

Naturally, being a wise and hard-working captain, Grantaire returned to his cabin and bolted the door for a nap.

He didn’t wake up again until the cabin door shattered under the battering it was receiving from the other side, splinters spraying across the room as the wood gave way. Judging by the unfamiliar faces behind the empty stares of their gun barrels, the capture of the merchant ship had been less than successful. Shit.

“Are you the captain?” The stranger’s English was heavily accented but passable. Grantaire was less than certain what the best answer might be.

“A captured ship has no captain!” He protested. “I am a dead man or a slave: the philosopher in rags or the one at the bottom of the sea. If I have not lost my ship, I have lost my crew; if I have not lost my crew, I have lost my life. Certainly, I have lost tonight’s provision of rum, and what else is there that matters? Pin a title to a sailor, will his skeleton bear its’ stripes? Two centuries will not look back on the riggers of a merchant ship. Two years will not look back on its quartermaster, two months for the captain. There is no lengthy sentence in the cells of history books for a man not born into prophecy. Come from nothing, and to nothing you shall return! How I despise mankind! If-”

The struggle that followed was neither impressive nor elegant, and Grantaire suspected it might have been more motivated by the aim of gagging him than that of restraining him for the fierce and terrifying menace that he is. Then the ship’s captain walked in, and Grantaire forgot how to use his words anyway.

Tall, blond and stunningly handsome, almost angelic in the delicate, feminine angles of his face and his fine-fingered, clean hands, there could not possibly have ever existed another person so beautiful. And then he opened his mouth, a clear and musical voice breathing life into words about a liberated merchant ship, _la Patrie_ , a mission against the savage cruelty of slavery and imperialism, the need for more ships and more manpower. The words and ideas pouring forth from him were laughably impossible at best, wildly far-fetched, suggestions of taking on the whole world and changing it and its fiercely selfish inhabitants into better things. But the way he _talked._

Grantaire had met men who had a talent for telling stories, men who could build palaces and cities out of words, capture and excite the imagination of any audience and play them around to their own ends as beautifully as a conductor before his orchestra. But this captain breathed life and sincerity into every word, hope soaring in his tone, so genuine in his convictions that for a moment Grantaire almost found himself swept along with them.

Well, he thought to himself later as he was loaded onto _la Patrie_ with most of his crew, as he was secured by his still-bound wrists to the table in the captain’s cabin under the watchful eyes of his new guard. There were far worse men to be a captive of.

**Author's Note:**

> would YOU like to hear more about ex-captain Grantaire and his adventures with idealism?? Let me know what you thought of this incredibly silly piece of writing! Also over at @almostasunking on tumblr


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